Viewing page 277 of 404
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
1907 June 13 Thursday at Baddeck. Sun. New York. 14 Apr-1907 90 HAPHAZARD BALLOONING. MOVING INCIDENTS OF AN ASCENSION YEARS AGO. Some Things That Are Different From Those Found in the Logs of the Modern Aero Clubs-A Balloon Car Smoke Room-The Drag Hope as an Entertainer-Towed by a Freight Train. "I am interested," said a man who is getting to be quite as old as he makes believe he thinks he is, "in everything that is printed about modern aeronautics. One reason is that I once participated in an air journey myself before aeronautics was surrounded with the safeguards that later day experience has suggested. Comparing it with the modern flights that I have read about I think that it had its share of moving incidents." The man past middle age was requested to go on with his story, and as he was permitted to proceed without interruptions it is reproduced here without quotation marks for what he said: The biggest advertising scheme ever devised by a circus press agent was the creation of David S. Thomas, who represented in that capacity along about 1875 P.T. Barnum's Great Moral Show, then known as the Hippodrome. Dave Thomas had not skinned the dictionaries of resounding superlatives, as was done by Tody Hamilton later, but he knew how to accept free advertising from the upcountry dailies. How did it come to him? By balloons. The show carried two of them-one large enough to take up two persons, the other of about 90,000 cubic feet capacity and capable of soaring away with half a dozen men in the basket. The ascensions were made at the close of the final afternoon performance. In the little towns the Mayor or the editor in chief of the morning daily was taken up; in the cities of larger size as many editors in chief as would go, and if any such declined then managing editors, city editors or reporters were taken along. The experience, of course, was novel, and much good advertising was the result. When the show pitched its tents in Worcester, Mass.-I think it was in May, 1875-Thomas distributed his advertising generously among the newspapers and then sought introductions to the editors in chief. He invited each one to accompany him in a flight in the large balloon. If any declined he was requested to designate a member of his staff who would represent him in accepting the compliments of Mr. Barnum for the aerial trip. In some way it fell to me-either because of my position or my avoirdupois-to go along; and early in the afternoon the newspaper men who were to make the ascension were called for at their offices with carriages. In the first of these rode Mr. Barnum and three guests; in the second Mr. Dave Thomas and three guests. They drove to a street corner near the fair grounds where the balloon was undergoing inflation from a gas main. There it was learned that earlier in the day when the big bag had been partly inflated a gust of wind had careened it against a spike in a fence post and ripped a hole in it big enough to drive an ox team through. Prof. Washington H. Donaldson, the aeronaut, was sewing up the rip with sail twine, and he said he guessed the balloon would be all right for making the trip at the close of the afternoon show. Donaldson was a small, bronzed, wiry man, with a shoebrush mustache and steel nerves. He had been a balloon trapeze performer and he regarded anything in the way of a basket as an arrangement de luxe. This was to be his 107th ascension, and he had never met with a serious accident. He had a sweetheart in the show, a pretty girl who drove one of the chariots in the races, and he never made an ascension while with the show until, at almost the last moment, he hurried into the tent and bade her good-by. Some three or four weeks after his ascension he said good-by to her for the last time. He ascended from Chicago in the small balloon with a Chicago Journal reporter named Grimwood and they were blown over the lake. They did not come back. Many months later some of the netting of the balloon was washed up on the Michigan shore of the lake. Well, to get back to my story, we drove form where Donaldson was sewing up the ripped balloon over to the show, saw the performance, and when we came out of the big tent the balloon, fully inflated, was near by, tugging at the lines that were held by a score of men. Donaldson went quickly over all the fastenings of the netting to the ring - a stout iron ring of some five or six feet in diameter, to which were knotted the lines from the netting and those that supported the basket. He saw that the anchor line was in proper coil beneath the basket and held there by a light cord that would break and release the coil when the anchor was unhooked from the edge of the basket and let fall. He looked to the hitch of the 250 foot drag rope on the iron ring. Then Donaldson disappeared within the big tent. "He's saying good-by to his sweetheart," said Thomas to the men who were going up with him. In a few minutes Donaldson was upon the wire netting almost on a level with the ring, which was his post during an ascension. "Now step in, gentlemen," he said. Five newspaper men climbed into the big basket, followed by Thomas. There was room enough. The rim of the basket came up just high enough to permit them to rest their elbows on it when standing. In the bottom of the basket were a number of bags of sand weighing about twenty-five pounds each. "Ease her up," said Donaldson to the men at the lines. The balloon refused to rise and some of the sand bags were taken out. Still she didn't budge, and Donaldson said: "I don't like to start with less sand ballast than we have now." "We'll draw lots to see who stays behind," suggested one of the newspaper men. "No." said a youngster of rather solid build; "the lot may fall to some one who would be more disappointed than I would. I will give up my place." The young man who said this is now the editor of a leading New York daily paper. The other newspaper men demurred at his sacrifice and said they would take their chances at drawing lots, but Donaldson said that each of the others was lighter than the one who had volunteered to remain, and that settled it. "It's a bad day for ballooning," said Donaldson to him, "and maybe you will be glad you didn't go." Thus lightened, the balloon lifted the basket from the ground and tugged at the lines. The wind from the west had been so stiff that the big tent cover had to be lowered part way down the centre poles; and when Donaldson gave the word to let go, the ground and the throng fell away at an angle apparently of about 45 degrees toward the west, and the cheers and waving of hats and handkerchiefs became rapidly fainter. The first sensation as to height was when, in passing over the city, the eye could discern the angle from steeples and towers to the ground, and thus by a sort of intuitive computation perceive that the balloon was far above them. In a few minutes this angle was not discernible, and those in the balloon basket seemed to be looking directly down on the tops of tall objects. Then the sensation of being at a great height disappeared--the angle by which the eye measures distances was imperceptible. To the east lay Lake Quinsigamond, two miles or so from the city. The balloon was passing over one of the reservoirs of the city water supply. It looked like half a teaspoonful of ink spilled on a sheet of glazed paper, the liquid seeming to stand higher than the surface around it. One of the passengers said that with its stone embankment the reservoir looked like a jet cuff button. The balloon was now over the lake. "Half a mile up," said Donaldson, as he looked at his barometer. Lake Quinsigamond is deep, perhaps 50 or 60 feet in depth, yet the bottom could be plainly seen from tis height. From the shores the trunks of fir trees, long ago fallen over into the lake, slanted down into the deeper water. Near the middle of the lake was the channel of still deeper water, and this was plainly outlined. Now as the balloon moved on toward the east the earth looked like a great howl, and its rim seemed to be on a eye. The little hills and v landscape were not discern north the peak of Mount Wach like a slight elevation and bey Monadnock looked like an ear of the bowl. Mount Tom, over to the w Connecticut River, could be s the east, some forty miles dist Hill Monument and the big the Charleston Navy Yard, b in line, showed as one narrow The balloon was moving e about the rate of a mile in t yet there was no sensation of m great bowl beneath seemed to slowly toward the west. "My ears sing," said one of the basket. "We're falling," said Donalds his perch above the ring. "Wo jaws and your ears will stop ringin can see that we are descending by at the shadow of the balloon on the It grows larger." The balloon was allowed to until it was in the valley of a litt that flows toward the east. Ther ways a wind current one way or th in a valley and with the current easterly the balloon sailed along, the time with some of the 250 fo rope trailing. It crossed the track Boston and Albany Railroad half times or more where the road from one to the other side of the ri Conversation with persons alo highways and in the dooryards wa --easy for them, for we could ma what they said in ordinary tones, bu for us in one way, for we had to s make them hear. "Where'd you come from?" som would shout at the top of his voice. "From Worcester!" would be the a using the hands as a megaphone. Then we would hear the inquirer his ordinary voice: "They say they come from Worces Offers of hospitality came to us all Usually the inducement to descend w and milk. A few hospitable souls i us to come down and have 'somet and we shook. our head regretfully. There were a few incidents of th that I mentioned as "moving incidents" I began talking. These were strung at various stages of the journey. It was supper time when we saw th lage of Ashland ahead, and we decid descend. The drag rope was trailing fifty feet on the ground. Donaldson shouted to those belo catch hold of the rope. One man succ in getting a grip on it and found hi going so fast that he was afraid to le He came to a stone wall, hit the top with one foot and landed in a small po He hung on and made a wake like of a swimming muskrat till he reache other bank. There he got help, the loon's speed was checked and the ai was pulled to the earth, towed to a fence and weighted with coblestone man promised to keep persons with ma away, and we went to a hotel to supper After supper the wind had fallen, the ascent of the balloon was almost stra up. At the height of about half a Donaldson said: News Inbure [[?]] The Latest Thing in Flying Machines ------ PARIS, France, April 13.-- A flying machine of an entirely novel type, the invention of M. Collomb, well- News New York 14 Apr - 1907 Isreal Ludlow, who fell from one of his flying machines several months ago and was thereby injured to such an extent that he is unable to walk, is wheeled from place to place in an invalid's chair. This does not, however, cause his interest in aeronautics to wane, for he attends the meetings of the Aero Club all the inventor went the other nig home in Eighty-fourth street to the rooms of the Aero Club, in East Forty-second street, in his chair, which was pushed all the way by a negro. The chair just fitted into the elevator of the building and he was soon in the clubroom. One of the objects of the meeting was to consider a flag for the organization, which has on it the emblem of a flying man with far spreading wings. The attendant, sitting out on the stairs, looked longingly at the expanded pinions. "Not that I'm a-kicking at all," he said "but if Mr. Ludlow would buy me a pair of those air wings I certainly reckon it would facilitate our way back to Eighty-fourth street.
